I sold my 2,300 ETH (approximately 64 BTC worth at 0.0268xx to 0.0275xx + trading fees when purchased on BitFinex) earlier today when I saw it coming back down. I sold it a tad higher than what I bought it for and managed to only lose 0.2 BTC because of fees.
Since I am new to this thread, I remain a bit uncertain the extent to which Fakhoury tolerates it deviating from its main emphasis, but it appears from the content of your post that each of us are fairly bullish about bitcoin and are not attempting to distract from that perspective in terms of talking about the interplay of other coins (and coin de-jure seems to be ETH... hahahahahaha)
Personally, I think that whenever we are trading any coins, whether BTC or otherwise, we need to include the calculation of the fee whether we take a position and concerning at what point we exit a position. Whether you make money or lose money on each trade or overall, those are fairly personal calculations and risks, when going in and out of BTC, whether doing so through fiat or alts.
And, yep, I agree that sometimes it is better just to exit a position at a bit of a loss, rather than continue the risk.. likely gets a bit easier to establish these kinds of trading strategies with more and more experience.
Also, when I said I'm officially 52/48 in BTC/ETH, that was only on BitFinex. I also have and trade Bitcoin on Coinbase and BTC-e. I don't keep all of my eggs in one basket in case one of the exchanges I trade on get hacked. So, I was 52%/48% into it for trading purposes to make gains and not for any thoughts of it being a legitimate player in crypto. Not enough time has passed to convince me of that.
Well, fair enough. Seems like you and I are engaging in some similar practices of distributing some of our funds in various exchanges, and sometimes also we are keeping track of distributions of coins in various regards. Personally, I have found it quite a learning experience and a handful for me just to keep track of my various BTC holdings and potential arbitrage opportunities therein and risk management therein, and I had dabbled a little bit with some other coins, but really I found that I was not really personally ready (nor my BTC portfolio) for adding other coins to the complexity of my BTC holdings - and even in light of my other fiat based financial investments.
I'll attempt to give a very summary anecdote to illustrate this point. I started buying BTC in November 2013, and I bought all the way down, and throughout 2014 and most of 2015, whenever I sold any BTC I replaced them within about 24 hours because I considered that my BTC portfolio was not in a selling position (mostly because it was overall in the red through most of that time). Since BTC prices remained so low through most of 2015 (mostly in the $200s), I was able to sufficiently acquire an adequate number of BTC throughout that part of 2015 in order to begin to trade in October 2015. I accomplished this "beginning to trade" position by conceptualizing my BTC portfolio more or less into three divisions: 1) those BTC acquired under $280; 2) those BTC acquired under $380 and 3) total BTC holdings. Anyhow, initially, I authorized BTC trading only in terms of the first conceptualization, but as BTC prices rose, I was able to increase my authorizations because my average cost per BTC went down and I was slowly able to increase personal BTC trading authorizations.
Also, when I said 52%/48%, that was not percentage of what I have available to invest. That was only what I had on BitFinex. I initially had 130.2 Bitcoin on BitFinex. I purchased ETH [Only with funds on BitFinex] at prices ranging from 0.0268xx to 0.0277xx for a total of 64.2 BTC worth that included fees. That left me 66 BTC on BitFinex. I have approximately the same amount on Coinbase and half that amount on BTC-e.
O.k.. that makes sense... .. and surely each of us make differing judgements regarding how to divide our coins and how to calculate various aspects of our holdings, and like you suggested each of the exchanges (or coin holding locations) have its own characteristics, opportunities and maybe even limitations... and it appears from your more or less rough calculation of your total holdings that you had traded a bit less than 20% of your total holdings.. which seems a bit more reasonable.. especially if you are able to see some kind of potential opportunity to trade but not to risk everything on such perceived opportunity.
The reason I have half that amount on BTC-e is because it's harder to sell larger amounts on BTC-e than it is on BitFinex and CoinBase. 100 BTC is chump change on BitFinex but considered a damn wall on BTC-e.
Yeah, it is a bit funny how the dynamics of various exchanges work and I have some coins on BTC-e, Coinbase and some others that are more or less pegged to Bitstamp prices. I also have some coins on Gemini, Local Bitcoins, Circle and blockchain.info (for direct trading or buying/selling). I have considered possibilities with Bitfinex and putting coins directly on Bitstamp (and even some other exchanges), but I have not gotten around to it, yet.
If we were to consider all of my holdings in various places, I'm 40% crypto (All BTC at the moment; I did have some ETH for approximately 10 hours), 8% silver, 15% gold and the rest in FIAT. I don't trade any stocks but I probably should. Wish I had bought stock in Amazon this time last year for instance.
You are exactly correct to consider the diversification or lack thereof concerning your various financial holdings.. and you seem to be quite a bit more diversified than a lot of the folks who participate in various BTC talk forums.. But, yeah, everyone has their starting points in terms of investments that may take a while to develop and sometimes it takes a while to redistribute allocations..and sometimes we may need to reallocate on the fly (with some risk).
Of course, everyone's distribution is going to differ, and I have quite a bit in various fiat related investments, index funds, business matters and initially, I had intended to invest (slowly move over a 6-12 month period) up to about 10% of my total quasi-liquid investments into BTC, and then see how it played out thereafter. So I pretty much accomplished the reallocation through 2014 (which was not really the best time to make such plunge, but whatever), and after BTC prices went up starting in late 2015 and currently, my distribution quasi-liquid holdings seems to be somewhere around 13 to 14% in BTC. Yeah, each of us are going to make different choices regarding this, and the extent that we may need to redistribute and at what times and also depending on our timeline. Maybe 40% in BTC is too risky, yet that seems to be a question that you need to decide and maybe even reconsider from time to time depending on how the various markets play out, and your personal assessment of various markets in your total portfolio.
You might consider my investment of 40% of my available funds in crypto as ludicrous. I'm not sure. I know some people think I'm crazy. However, I'm CRAZY about bitcoin. I even mine bitcoin. I used to mine it rather seriously for a home miner. I have 400A service at my house. I had 41 x S7's in my house at one time. Now, I only have 6 x S7's. I sold the rest on eBay the second week of March at approximately $820 each on average not including eBay and PayPal fees. The buyers paid for shipping. I absolutely LOVE Bitcoin. I always will as long as it's alive and kicking. I'm all in [so to speak] with everything bitcoin stands for! It's part of my being. My wife is witness to that. She cannot keep me quiet about it around friends and family. lol
hahahahaha... you seemed to have adequately described and disclosed your BTC bullish credentials, and sounds like you have quite a bit more investment in btc than me, and a lot of very decent BTC-related experiences that are going to continue to contribute to your insight into BTC and your various BTC trading strategies, whether you diversify into alts or not or use them as bitcoin building opportunities.
I'm like you as far as the creators and investors of ETH being the ones who are propping it up to get it primed for a pump and dump. I'm all about pump and dumps. I turned 36 BTC into 110 BTC on the pump and dump scheme we had with LTC between April and June of 2015. If that's what they are really up to with this coin to make some relatively quick money, so be it. I'm going to try to capitalize from it from beginning to end just as I did with LTC.
There's certainly nothing wrong with identifying trading opportunities as long as you recognize various aspects regarding the fundamentals - and yeah, sometimes even vaporware can present opportunities if you recognize aspects of the community pumping it. I cannot hate on anyone making nearly 3x BTC... hahahaha
I totally agree with you about the centralization of ETH and decentralization of BTC. BTC still rules in my play book and nothing else comes close yet. ETH has a lot to prove to convince me it can be a real player in crypto.
Actually, I am beginning to think about ETH a little bit like some kind of potential quasi-centralized system that can be built upon BTC (at some point), that is if it can last long enough and not get dumped into oblivion... At the same time, there is a lot of misleading information that premise the various ETH pump attempts including suggestions that it is Bitcoin 2.0 and that bitcoin is broken... blah blah blah, whatever.
And, actually, I am no bitcoin monogamist because if at any point in time, it seems better to move over to another coin because of better decentralization and immutability fundamentals, then I will do that. There is no alt coin that is even close to bitcoin in regards to decentralization and immutability fundamentals.
But, yeah, if you merely recognize pump opportunities with ETH and don't get caught up in the bullshit, then there is no problem to take some risk with some of your crypto money or whatever categories of money you want to conceptualize as being within your risk tolerance to put into it.
In the meantime, I'm going to do all I can to create gains via trading ETH/BTC and ETH/USD. It's that simple. I personally believe it offers an excellent opportunity to make some extra BTC. I have a friend I chat with all the time on
tradingview.com who already doubled the amount of BTC he put into ETH a couple of weeks ago and is buying another new car this week. I told him I'm not messing with it at the time. I wish NOW I had listened to him. I could of had approximately 194 BTC on BitFinex right now instead of 130 if I had invested half of my BTC on BitFinex a couple of weeks ago instead of delaying until today.
It is hard to know for sure, and really we cannot get too greedy or kick ourselves because we missed some pump opportunities. You seem to recognize the gamble, and so yeah you gotta figure how much you would be willing to place at this time (rather than what you could have done... ).. but anyhow, you seem to have a good approach and thinking in regards to a lot of this distribution of risk considerations.
The main purpose of my posting the article here was to get opinions about whether or not ETH can be a real player in crypto. I'm a noob when it comes to ETH, DAO's and how it all works down to itty bitty details.
Thanks for sharing and not holding back your opinion and thanks for not cursing me out for sharing the article to gain opinions. Much appreciated!
Yeah, hopefully we are not getting too far off topic here, with our trading discussion.
As I told a previous member of the forum, Fakhoury, asked for my thoughts about ETH and DAO's in a PM a couple of days ago; if I thought it was a threat to BTC, etc... I shared what little I knew about ETH at the time. I ran across this article today on tradingview.com and decided I would share it with him. After further consideration, I decided to share it with the entire forum. Not to defame bitcoin or prop up ETH. It was simply to get insight from others who might know more. I purchased it solely with the intent to make gains in trading. Not because I believe it's a serious player in crypto. It will take several years to convince me of that.
I can see where others might misconstrue my statement about 52/48 BTC/ETH into thinking I believe ETH is a serious player in crypto. However, I assure you, that's NOT the case at all. I was saying that in terms of "trading" not "confidence" towards ETH. I by no means am confident about the near future of ETH as I am about BTC. However, I am confident about the opportunity to make some extra BTC by trading ETH.
Kind regards,
David
Yeah, sure. I agree that your article posting may have been misread and misunderstood, yet your substantive clarification post thereafter seems to show that you are probably more bullish about bitcoin (and certainly more invested in BTC) than the average bitcoiner...
